joeyduck

I am tired on the way home, but who is not a bit tired in the last 5 km of a 40 km round trip commute? My first and last 8 km of the commute is with my son in his seat, so that is far more fatiguing than fasting to me. This being said, I usually feel the same on fasting days and non-fasting days.

I find sitting on the couch stagnant to be far worse when hungry than working or cycling. I will give in to temptation to snack on the couch, but I can not, nor do I want to when working or cycling.

Honestly I stumbled across this thread on accident. I am not clyde, I have maxed out at 195, but moderate my weight at 180-185. I would love to get to 170-175 but those were university competitive swimming weights. I have always lead an active life, punctuated with injuries and weight gain.

Try for two weeks. Fast from dinner to dinner. Resist the urge to snack, or if you must make it good, cheese, nuts, seeds. It is hard at first, but it gets easy after two weeks. Eat regular on non fasting days. I have also cut back drinking to maybe two beer a week. That is the biggest difference.


Otherwise great advice on myfitnesspal, great for keeping track. It is surprising how much you actually eat if you get a scale and measure it.

exile

My suggestion would be to try it and see if it works for you Farhat. I've seen testimonials for every diet & life style change that I'm not sure what to believe anymore. And I've seen someone refuting those testimonials based opinion, personal experience, common sense, or a scientific study.

So don't worry because whatever happens you'll either lose weight, gain weight, or stay the same.

stephtu

Maybe it sounds unpleasant to you, but you haven't tried it. Joeyduck and I have. It's really not bad at all IMO. We have plenty of energy stored in our bodies to last a couple hours. I definitely wouldn't try 50 mile ride on a fasting day without taking in some additional food. But 40 km, half that, that sounds perfectly fine, if it's not like being ridden at a time trial pace. That should take maybe 850 calories. Between glycogen stores refilled from eating the day before, and fat burning, one has plenty of energy to not hit any wall. Moderate amounts of exercise actually suppress hunger, for me.

The body just doesn't need that many calories, even with a moderate amount of exercise. That's why some people get into trouble, they overcompensate how much additional they need because they rode. Ride 20 miles, eat two Clif bars, really didn't need to eat any.

It's not fasting every day. Plenty of calories available for riding. Hasn't stopped me from riding ~3100 miles in the 9 months I've been doing it. Save the epic rides for the eating days, and eat during those rides, but shorter & less intense rides are perfectly pleasant on the fasting days with just water.

Moderate exercise is fine. 3+ hour rides, or high intensity > 2 hrs, I would schedule different days. I just don't see why you think 40km is a bad idea if he has been doing it and doesn't have any problems with fatigue/recovery.

It's really not that radical if you look at it on a weekly basis rather than daily. It's just a different calorie distribution from day to day. Say rider does 6000 calories per week of exercise, including RMR needs 3000 calories per day to maintain weight. Conventional diet, target 1 pound per week loss, you eat 2500 calories x 7 on average (adjust for extra hard rides, less on other days to keep total same). My diet, it would look like 800, 3200, 3200, 800, 3200, 3200, 3200, to target approx same rate of loss (also with adjustment for hard rides, not falling on the 800 days). ADF tends to be more aggressive looking for faster rate of loss, might be more like 3500/600 pattern for 2 pound per week target, but one can always adjust upwards to lose slower.

It's just something that works for some people better, feeling some deprivation only part time rather than every day. Plus it does things with various hormone levels and there is some preliminary research indicating possible health benefits. It's not for everyone, for sure, but you can exercise fine on it, just more moderately on the fasting days. Obviously it's not compatible for a huge volume race training schedule requiring fewer rest/moderate days, but there's still plenty of room for a good deal of exercise even on the ADF plan.

Dunbar

I personally hate the feeling of being hungry while riding at even a moderate pace. I rarely eat breakfast so I'm familiar with what it feels like to go 12-18 hours without taking in any significant amount of calories. If I ride in that condition I feel lethargic, struggle to make power and look forward to getting home so I can eat something. The concept of intermittent fasting can make sense for the average American leading a fairly sedentary lifestyle. It makes very little sense to me to fast on a day that you're doing 2+ hours of endurance exercise. If something doesn't cause you physical harm that doesn't make it a good idea.

I started at the same weight - 195lbs; 28-29 BMI - and I'm down to around 160-165lbs. I don't own a scale and am only mildly curious about how much I weigh. I would still ride just as much as I do now (190-200 miles per week) even if I didn't lose a pound. In fact, my first year back to cycling in 2012 I rode ~3500 miles and didn't lose a single pound of weight.

stephtu

You haven't shown that it's a bad idea either. All you've basically said is it sounds like a bad idea to you, you haven't really explained why it's a bad idea generally. Just because you feel lethargic & hungry in certain conditions exercising not having eaten for 18 hours doesn't mean everyone will. Two of us on this thread already said we generally don't, you get used to training fasted. I wouldn't fast for "2+" hours of endurance exercise either. But we were talking 40km originally. That's well less than 2 hours at a sedate pace.

For people who still have weight to lose, I'm just throwing it out as a workable option, and asserting that fasting and *moderate* amounts of exercise mix just fine for a lot of people after you get acclimated to it, not "don't work together" as you originally asserted. Maybe it doesn't work for you personally, but don't pooh-pooh it totally for everyone.

jwramseier

I would offer somethings that worked for me. I think all the replies thus far are great and should help.

1. I have tried 10+ diets. They all will help you loose weight if you follow the rules.
2. All the 10+ diets I have done ultimately failed as I was not able to sustain any of them.
3. I decided to change my life style so I could develop a pattern of exercise and diet that would be sustainable for a long time.
4. I set cycling goals to ride as much as could and to set milestone events like a metric century or full century to have something to target. I even joined a club to make it more fun and sociable - this was a great help for me and I have met some great friends.
5. I started to understand my food choices and make adjustments to healthier alternatives that I actually liked.
6. I used myFitnessPal and Strava to help me monitor my progress and provide additional motivation.

I have lost 50 pounds so far. But, weight loss is no longer my primary goal. My goal is to be a better cyclist and I have seen continual improvement. I just completed my first 100 mile centuries in the last month. I have also established a new lifestyle that I like and should be able to sustain.

Good luck on your progress.

joeyduck

I agree with this method 100%. Diet monitoring and fitness, your life will be so much nicer and you will be happier than the neighbors. I am glad my parents taught us life sports like xc skiing, swimming, hiking and cycling. I could only play lacrosee, soccer and rugby before my body gave out (boo ACLs).

Stay regularly active and don't over indulge too much and eat smart things tend to stay a little more in check.

Dunbar

Eundurance athletes need to properly fuel their efforts. We're talking about doing an activity that burns hundreds of calories per hour, not sitting on the couch. At a 15mi/h pace (about what I average on my "fast" bike) 25 miles is 1 hour and 40 minutes of exercise and I'll burn around 700-800 calories according to my power meter. I think it's pretty extreme to mix moderate aerobic exercise while simultaneously starving yourself but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I also couldn't agree more that all diets are gimmicks to a certain extent that tend to fail over the longer term. Keep cycling as much as you can, try not to eat too poorly and stop worrying about how much you weigh.

stephtu

Definitely agreeing to disagree. 700-800 calories, even if 600 of those are coming from glycogen stores, should be well within your body's stores. People who are looking to drop weight shouldn't be under the mistaken impression that you need an extra Snickers bar every half an hour they work out, if they are then they are self-sabotaging. One can easily be properly fueled between fat reserves and the previous night's meal! First couple hours run off previous night, only if you are going for hours 3-6 do you really need to replenish. Post workout, just make sure you start eating again some hours before the workout the day after, you'll be fine.

It's only in recent history evolutionarily speaking that humans have had constant access to food. If the hunt was unsuccessful one day, two days, do you really think those that had to shut down all activity and be unable to hunt the third day would be able to survive?

Intermittent fasting isn't starving yourself. Going without food for one single day isn't at all close to really starving. Maybe when not having ever done it before, it might *feel* like starving, but really it's not, and your body will still function fine, and be able to exercise for a decent chunk of time. You'll have plenty of fuel, and the next day you can refuel. It's only long efforts that require more fuel, or stringing multiple fasting days together & the exercise, that's problematic. Fat stores are the body's defense against famine. It'd be pretty bad if one couldn't stand a one day famine! If one has excess fat, surely it can't be bad to use it occasionally for its purpose!

joeyduck

I have easily done 80 km morning rides on an empty stomach, with minimal snacks on the way. Snacks include dried fruit and seeds in only a small tupperware that barely fits in my saddle bag.

That was a group ride; I kept up and took the lead for a while for my first ride with them. They were impressed a regular guy on a 35 pound steel bike could be so fast (and not eating energy gels or powerbars). Good thing they did not know I didn't eat breakfast, nor have coffee; or they may have given up cycling! This would have been a Saturday ride after a Friday fast (ate dinner Friday night). I eat well after rides like that though.

When on the varsity swim teams in HS and university I never ate the morning of competitions, or lunch for that matter since meets usually went through the lunch hour.

The funny thing is today is an eating day and I was starving before lunch. I had oats for breakfast, an apple for morning snack and I was absolutely starving (it was distracting my work) well before I usually eat lunch. Yesterday a fasting day, not hungry at all. Not even when I got home for the most part, I had a small handful of blueberries and then we had a later dinner.